Artifacts as Actors in Educational Innovation: Using Data to Facilitate the Transition From Primary to Secondary School

• In Event: 33.065 - Materiality in Educational (Inter)action: Same Concern, Different Approaches

Abstract

The content and goals of educational innovations often become materialized in specific artifacts, or purposefully designed objects that aim to improve educational practices (e.g., textbooks, educational technology). However, for a long time artifacts have escaped the attention of researchers on educational innovation (see Fenwick, 2011). And when artifacts did figure in studies on innovations, they were typically reduced to their functional or symbolic meaning (Barad, 2003; Orlikowski, 2007). As a consequence, the active role of artifacts was often ignored or minimized in understanding organizational activity. Recently, scholars from different disciplines have started to (re)think in a more nuanced way the relationship between artifacts and human actions (e.g., Latour, 2005; Miller, 2005; Suchman, 2007).

With this study, we will join this recent line of work and disentangle the complex relationship between (the materiality of) artifacts and human/organizational behavior. In particular, we study the implementation of the Educational Care and Support-file (ECS-file) in Flemish schools (Belgium), a file developed as an attempt to stimulate care continuity between primary and secondary schools. Using this particular case of educational innovation, we want to theoretically contribute to the understanding of educational innovation and implementation by bringing artifacts to the center of it. Rather than defining an artifact as something that is, we focus on the (inter)actions and practices that are enacted by artifacts as they achieve their (sometimes unintended) accomplishments only in use.

In order to unravel the role of artifacts in the process of educational innovation, we draw on organizational routines theory. Following Feldman and Pentland (2003), we distinguish three interrelated aspects of routines: the ostensive aspects of routines, the performative aspects of routines, and artifacts. By studying the constitutive role of each of those elements and their interactions, we will address the role of artifacts on the course of organizational routines. The research questions are formulated as follows:
RQ 1: How is the innovation content materialized in the form of the ECS-file?
RQ 2: How does the ECS-file shape the ostensive and performative aspects of the routines?

A qualitative-interpretative design was undertaken, consisting of an artifact analysis and case study research. We started by analyzing the content and form of the ECS-file, in which we focused on both the material characteristics and the underlying cultural meanings of this artifact (Bryman, 2008). Next, we set up case studies in two primary and two secondary schools. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with key actors in the implementation process (i.e., principals, teachers, special needs coordinators, and external actors from the wider organizational field).

The findings illuminate that the ECS-file does more than fulfilling the role than it was designed for. In its describing and synthesizing of the care initiatives, it also created a new care reality and changed the positions and discursive interactions in the school teams around care. The study reveals that the artifact installed a very particular way of speaking and thinking about care, it opened up and legitimized particular actions, created a social network of interactions, and repositioned people toward each other.

Authors

• Virginie Marz, University of Amsterdam

• Karen Vermeir, University of Leuven

• Geert Kelchtermans, University of Leuven